ute. Marmont's troops,
starting out at the same time he had taken his departure, would barely
have reached Sezanne by this time, so much more slowly did an army move
than a single person. The Emperor, who had intimated that he would
remain at Nogent until the next day, would scarcely undertake the march
before morning. Aumenier lay off to the northwest of Sezanne, distant
a few miles. If the young aide could find something to eat and get a
few hours' sleep, he could be at Sezanne before the Emperor arrived and
his information would be ready in the very nick of time. With that
thought, after staring hard at the chateau in some little wonderment,
he turned aside from the road that led to its entrance and made for the
village.

His mother had died the year before; his father and his sister, with
one or two attendants, lived alone. There was no noble blood in
Marteau's veins, as noble blood is counted, but his family had been
followers and dependents of the Aumeniers for as many generations as
that family had been domiciled in France. Young Jean Marteau had not
only been Laure d'Aumenier's playmate, but he had been her devoted
slave as well. To what extent that devotion had possessed him he had
not known until returning from the military school he had found her
gone.

The intercourse between the young people had been of the frankest and
pleasantest character, but, in spite of the sturdy respectability of
the family and the new principles of equality born of the revolution,
young Marteau realized--and if he had failed to do so his father had
enlightened him--that there was no more chance of his becoming a
suitor, a welcome suitor, that is, for the hand of Laure d'Aumenier
than there was of his becoming a Marshal of France.

Indeed, as in the case of many another soldier, that last was not an
impossibility. Men infinitely more humble than he in origin and with
less natural ability and greatly inferior education had attained that
high degree. If Napoleon lived long enough and the wars continued and
he had the opportunity, he, too, might achieve that coveted
distinction. But not even that would make him acceptable to Count
Robert, no matter what his career had been; and even if Count Robert
could have been persuaded the old Marquis Henri would be doubly
impossible.

So, on the whole, Jean Marteau had been glad that Laure d'Aumenier had
gone out of his life. He resolved to put her out of his heart in the
same w